by Betsy Byars
26
LIVING UP TO HERCULEAH
Herculeah was still standing with Meat’s mother across the street from Madame Rosa’s.
“We ought to go in the house,” Meat’s mother said. “It’s cold. You’re shivering.”
“I’m not shivering from the cold.”
“Come on. Let’s go inside.”
“I can’t, yet. I want to see them bring him out. I have to be sure they got him. I’m really afraid of him. I won’t sleep tonight unless I see him in custody.”
They waited side by side under the streetlight.
“Well, there he is,” Meat’s mother said. “Take a good look.”
The puppeteer came out between two policemen. He was no longer wearing Madame Rosa’s cape, and he was in handcuffs. As the policeman put him in the back of the squad car, Herculeah caught a glimpse of his face. He no longer looked frightening. He looked frightened.
“Doesn’t look as dangerous as I thought he would,” Meat’s mother said.
“When he was holding that knife, he looked dangerous.”
“Looks can fool you sometimes.”
Herculeah nodded. “Voices, too. I actually believed he was Madame Rosa.” A sudden thought caused her to draw in her breath. “Oh, I’m going to have to go back for Tarot.”
“That awful bird. I went over to Madame Rosa’s one time—I needed to give her a piece of my mind about something—and the bird flew off its perch like it was trying to attack me. Maybe that wasn’t its intention, but one of its claws got caught in my necklace. Fortunately, I wasn’t wearing my pearls. I had on some cheerful plastic things I won at Bingo. If they hadn’t been pop-it beads, they would have been ruined.”
Meat’s mother stuck her frying pan under her arm, since it obviously was not going to be needed. She sighed.
That sigh told Herculeah they were getting ready to talk about something more serious than pop-it beads.
“I wish I understood why this terrible murder happened,” Meat’s mother said.
“It happened, I think, because a boy tried to scare his mother,” Herculeah said.
“Scare his own mother?”
“Yes.”
“Well, thank goodness my Albert doesn’t do that.”
“No, you have a wonderful son.” Herculeah broke off. “Oh, there’s my mom. She’ll help me now. Thank you very, very much.”
“Just stay out of trouble. That will be thanks enough.”
“I will.”
“And keep my Albert out of trouble, too.”
Herculeah waited for the squad car to pull away. Then she walked over to her mother’s car and stood there impatiently.
“What was that police car doing here? There hasn’t been another murder, has there?”
“No,” Herculeah said, “but almost. The victim this time would have been me.” She put her arms around her mother. “I am so glad to see you.”
“What happened?” Her mother drew back to take a better look at Herculeah.
“Well, I got this telephone call and—”
There was a whine from the backseat of the car. “What’s that noise?” Herculeah asked, bending down to peer into the rear window. She looked at her mother in amazement. “Mom, it’s a dog. You’ve got a dog. Why? You have never liked dogs.”
“I like them even less now. Remember I told you about that couple who were divorcing and one of them kidnapped the dog? Well, nothing would do but I had to get the dog back—which I did. Now, would you believe it, nobody wants the dog. They never did. They were just using him to fight over. See if you can get him out of the car, Herculeah. His name is Trip.”
Herculeah looked at the dog in the backseat. He was a large yellow ball of misery, curled up, trembling with the indignity of being kidnapped and abandoned.
“Come on, Trip,” Herculeah said in a kind voice. As she bent down, her knees began to shake again. “Mom, my knees won’t stop shaking. Oh, I’ve got to tell you this one thing. It can’t wait. The puppeteer killed Madame Rosa!”
“Who’s the puppeteer?”
“Oh, Mom.”
“Well, get this dog out of the car, and I’ll listen to the whole thing.”
“Come on, Trip,” Herculeah urged. “Come on.”
Trip rolled his eyes in Herculeah’s direction but would not get out of the car.
“Come on! I haven’t got all night.” She turned to her mother. “Mom, he won’t get out of the car. And the parrot’s still loose in Madame Rosa’s backyard. We have to catch him. He can’t stay out all night. He’ll freeze.”
“What, may I ask, is the parrot doing in Madame Rosa’s backyard. And who, may I ask, took him there? What has been going on here?”
“You aren’t going to like it.”
“I believe that.”
“Anyway, it’s too long to explain right now. Let’s go get the parrot, then let’s get the dog out of the car, then let’s go in and call Dad and let him yell at us, and then we’ll talk.”
But before they did any of those things, they stood for a moment in the light from the streetlight. Herculeah’s mother put her arm around Herculeah again.
“Sometimes,” her mother said, “sometimes I wish I’d been watching another movie the night you were born.”
“Instead of Hercules vs the Moloch?”
“Yes. I remember in the delivery room, I told the nurse that if you were a boy, I was going to name you Hercules. She tried to talk me out of it. She said if you were puny, the kids would tease you. Then the doctor got into the act. He said if you were a girl, I should name you Samsonya—for Samson. He even sang it like a Russian.”
Herculeah’s mother gave an imitation of the doctor’s song. “‘Oh, Samson-ya.”’ She smiled. “The nurse did her best to talk me out of Herculeah. I sometimes wish I had listened to her.”
“Why? I like my name.”
“Because, my darling daughter, you are beginning to live up to it.”
27
HERCULEAH AND THE GOLDEN FLEECE
“I’ve been trying to call you all night,” Meat complained, “and your line’s been busy. Who were you talking to for so long?”
“My dad.”
Herculeah was lying in bed, her phone propped on the pillow. “My dad spent almost an hour giving me grief—unfairly! He said, ‘You gave me your solemn promise, young lady, that you would not go inside Madame Rosa’s house again.’ I said, ‘I didn’t go inside the house. I only went in the yard.’ But he pretended he couldn’t see the difference. Sometimes my dad is very dense for a detective.”
Meat said, with a certain sadness in his voice, “I can’t believe I missed the whole thing. I was at the library.”
“I wish I’d missed it,” Herculeah answered. “My knees won’t quit shaking. Well, every now and then they do, and then I remember the puppeteer’s fingers around my ankle, and they start shaking again.”
“I would have gone with you, Herculeah.”
“I know that.”
“Even though I had promised my mother, and myself, never to go back to that house again, I would have gone. I tackled him once, you know.”
“That was me you tackled.”
“Well, I thought it was him. That’s what counts.”
Herculeah leaned back on the pillow. “Oh, guess what my dad told me—after he stopped yelling at me, that is.”
“I’m not that good at guessing.”
“He told me they found Madame Rosa’s one living relative. It’s a sister, only her name’s not Marianna, it’s Sophie, and she lives in Duluth. Now comes the really good news.”
“Oh?” Meat was suspicious. He knew that his idea of good news was usually not the same as Herculeah’s.
“The sister’s afraid of birds, so I get to keep Tarot—permanently!”
“Oh.” Meat’s suspicion was confirmed.
Herculeah continued without pause. “Meat, do you remember a conversation we had about a month ago?”
“I remember all our conv
ersations,” Meat answered.
“This one took place over the phone. It was late at night, and you had called to tell me there was an all-night Hercules party on TV and they were showing Hercules vs the Moloch.”
“Yes, the Moloch was a man in a cat mask.”
“I know. Then you said that the next movie was Hercules vs the Hydra, remember?”
“Yes, the Hydra was better. It was a many-headed monster.”
“Exactly! That’s the whole point!”
“I think I missed it.”
“Well, that night, when you said Hydra, I got this funny feeling, a premonition, that my next challenge would be the Hydra. It didn’t make sense then, but it does now.”
“I still don’t get it.”
“The puppeteer was a many-headed monster.”
There was a silence while Meat digested the information. “I guess you could say that.” He paused, then added, “So do you have any premonition about what your next challenge is going to be?”
She laughed. “With the dog my mother brought home, maybe my next challenge will be the Golden Fleas.”
“The Golden Fleece? But that’s not Hercules. It’s Jason and the Golden Fleece. Or did you say fleas? Golden fleas?”
“Yes, fleas. It was just a joke.”
There was a silence. Then Herculeah said thoughtfully, “Actually, I do have a sort of premonition, but it doesn’t make sense.”
“What?”
“It happened when my mother and I were making a bed for Trip in the kitchen. He wouldn’t get on the blanket, just kept looking at the stairs, like he wanted to sleep up there with us. My mom said, ‘Don’t give me that dog-in-the-manger look. You’re sleeping in the kitchen,’ and before I could explain to mom that she probably meant hangdog look, I got the premonition.”
“So your premonition has something to do with a dog,” Meat said thoughtfully.
“No, the manger! That’s what doesn’t make any sense. It’s about the manger. I don’t even think there are mangers anymore.”
“A manger. Wait a minute. That does make sense! Herculeah, it does! A manger is in a stable, right? And one of Hercules’ labors was cleaning the Aegean stable. I know I’m right about that, because I looked up Hercules in the encyclopedia one time—this was right after I met you—and it listed all of his labors.”
“Cleaning a stable! That makes me hope my premonition is wrong.”
“Hercules did it with a river, I think. But of course you’d probably have to use—”
“Please don’t say a pitchfork,” Herculeah interrupted.
“I wasn’t going to,” Meat lied.
Herculeah smiled and yawned. “Meat, I’ve got to hang up. I can’t hold my eyes open. I’m falling asleep.”
“Oh, well, all right,” Meat said with reluctance. “Good night, Herculeah.”
“Good night, Meat.”
Herculeah put the phone down and turned off the light. “Cleaning a stable,” she said, as she closed her eyes. “Yuck.”
And from his stand, Tarot fluttered his wings and screeched, “Beware!”
What’s in store for Herculeah?
Don’t miss her next
terrifying adventure,
DEAD LETTER
When Herculeah Jones discovers a letter in her secondhand coat, she instantly recognizes it as a cry for help. Who wrote the letter, and what happened to them? It doesn’t take Herculeah long to uncover the clues and track down the truth. But what Herculeah doesn’t realize is that someone is stalking her—someone who would kill to keep the truth under wraps....
